Forgive My New Year Rant.

To paraphrase the frequently reblogged quote: “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” This is especially true of women, who with everything we still deal with in this day & age should be supporting each other so much more than we do. Obvious example: the odds are good that no matter who you are -especially if you’re a woman- you have something you don’t like about your physical self, a belief that you are somehow “in progress”, a work yet unfinished & requiring constant vigilance & evaluation. You may not even think about it that consciously, but I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t have something, however small.

Everything in our environment feeds this body dysmorphic disorder , even the “health”-focused publications, which have their own agenda. They have investors to feed too, you know. {I do not apologize for bad puns.} I think that the women I know {including myself} walk around isolated in their issues -job, relationship, body, health, weight… it all seems to come down to weight. A personal example is that I’m trying to get healthy again after three months of total inactivity, & while facing limited weight bearing movement for the next year or so. I’m not happy with where my body’s at – who would be, after playing couch potato for any extended amount of time?

What I’m getting at is that we’re all walking around wrapped up in our own issues, bumping into each other long enough to look up, startled, & make a snap judgement of the person in front of us. I’m lucky: I have an awesome metabolism, & beautiful parents. I’ve been told many times since I became an adult that I look like a perfect 50/50 mix of the two of them. I am my mother in miniature, with my dad’s jaw, & I got the Japanese legs from his side of the family, but stretched out along a 35″ inseam, which I proudly declared to so many people before I realized one day that it really pisses them off.

I’m realizing that I piss a lot of people off. Because I’m wrapped up in myself – I would smack me too. I assume like so many people do that when people see me, they not only see who I am physically in front of them but also everything that I see when I look at myself. However irrational, I think that they’ll see that I’m slightly over my usual weight, & that I’m tired because I stay up too late stressing over the same things they do. I assume that they will understand any blunders in whatever I say because they know that I’m essentially a nice person, who isn’t actively trying to piss them off. Alternately, when I’m looking at them, I only see a beautiful woman who’s wearing boots that I totally want, & who has gorgeous posture, & I can’t possibly know what their personal issues are at that moment unless they tell me, which they haven’t, & because I’m too wrapped up in what’s wrong with me by comparison to think about what’s going on with them.

We are all to some extent extremely self absorbed, & I consider myself to be pretty bad. I blindly & joyfully join conversations about food; talking about the food blogs that I read, the recipes I love that call for three sticks of butter, my unabashed love for the Top Pot Maple Bar. I assume this is a conversation that I’m welcome in; most of the time, the women having them are friends, or people I’ve met & have been talking to, & I assume that my input is as valid as everyone else’s.

But no fewer than twenty women, & probably a few more than that have stopped, their looks now icy, & coldly made cracks about how “cute” I am, because I talk too passionately about food “as though (I) actually eat it”. True quote, no paraphrasing.

I’m sure they think they’re so original, because they all laugh so loudly at the hilarious joke they’ve just made. They wait for me to laugh too.

It’s a snarky thing to say*. It’s wildly inappropriate at the best of times, & alienates & isolates me by labeling me as “other”. It puts them on one side of the line, & me squarely across from them. It makes me feel bad. On the one hand, I want to say to all of them, “Of course I fucking eat – you eat, she eats, we all eat. What the Fuck?”. {I try not to swear, & I realize that it would only undermine my point, but when people make me feel small, I get upset.}

What I find myself saying instead is something idiotic about ha ha, that’s hilarious, but you know, I do eat, & here, I’ll eat this, & that, in front of them – just so they’ll welcome me back into the conversation. Oh, & if they might never say it again. There are repeat offenders. I know why they’re saying it, & I know that for the people I know well enough to be around them & give them time to say it again, it may just be part of that social dance we sometimes do. Especially when you’re having a bad body day – we all have them, even if you think mine might be less alarming than yours, because it’s mine, & not yours. I have the same feelings as respects mine, for the record.

Those people who don’t know me – I write this for you, because I started this column with that quote about how everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle, & I’m about to make it relevant. You don’t know that I have genuine, 100% legit allergies to most of the artificial ingredients in shelf stable junk food, which means that my food choices can’t & aren’t fairly compared to those made by women who can eat everything in QFC without a trip to the hospital. You have no way of knowing this, & so you might feel alright about your back-handed compliment, but it’s important that you consider that whenever you’re talking to someone, you just don’t know everything about them. Maybe you’ll consider wether it’s really necessary to make that particular crack, or if you could keep the conversation positive. I guarantee that I have yet to meet someone who is intentionally trying to piss you off just by existing. {I’ve also had someone get upset with me for this…it was awkward.}

One woman I worked with about 6 years ago actually decided that this was an “allergy” – quotations to mean that my allergies were bogus, a cover for some kind of bizarre healthy food eating disorder she’s declared I had early on in the office gossip. She subsequently tried to get me to eat something she swore was homemade but was actually commercial box cookies with a particular dye in them – to prove that I was lying about why I eat organic & healthy food. {I knew how that particular cookie smelled, & called her on it. She went off in a huff.}

I’m looking at this draft & wondering if I’ve said this well – all of what I’ve written ought to fall into the “well duh” category, or the “she said what??” category, which is always validating to me, of course. But at the end of the day, I keep finding myself in this same awkward position, replaying the conversation at the end of the day & wondering what relationship/connection I’ve lost because I handled it badly.

Covering myself by joking that if they feel that way now, they’re really going to hate me in a few months when I get back into shape only further entrenches me in the “other” category. I know, I face-palmed when I got home. What is the right comeback, anyway?

What I’m trying to do here is change the conversation & start over. I promise not to rattle on about my “problems”, which are really only my business anyway, if you promise to talk about the food you love in the future without all those deprivation-mindset qualifiers. I want a more compassionate relationship for all of us, & I hope you understand.

♥ Momo

*Who’s said this to me? A family member, women I’ve worked with, friends of friends, former friends, girlfriends of boyfriends’ friends. Women in a store who overheard me talking to a friend in line at that store. I kid you not.